VATICAN CITY — Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, spiritual leader of the world’s Anglicans, will meet Pope Benedict XVI on November 21, Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi confirmed Friday.
The Vatican announced last week that Pope Benedict XVI has approved a new structure to ease the way for Anglicans — including married priests — to join the Roman Catholic Church.
Williams will be on hand for celebrations marking the 100th anniversary of the birth of Johannes Willebrands, a Dutch cardinal who was a pioneer in Catholic ecumenism and who died in 2006.
The Holy See said the move was a response to “many requests to the Holy See from groups of Anglican clergy and faithful in various parts of the world who want to enter into full and visible communion.”
The Anglican church has been confronted by a growing split over the ordination of women and gay marriage.
Several conservative Anglican priests have defected to Catholicism since the ordination of women was adopted from 1984 in various branches of the Anglican Communion and by the Church of England in 1992.
And soon other Protestant denominations will see the error of their ways…..and follow. Œcumenism and its goals of greater unity will always sell out the truth and the gospel. There can be no unity between truth and lies, and light and dark. They were, are, and always will be opposed. Any unity and compromise by its very nature turns Gospel truth into a lie.